Alpha Photography Blog

Happy New Year!  Enjoy a fun, and safe New Year’s Eve.

Speaking of celebrating - what better way than to enjoy a fine meal at a restaurant with a 5 star view!  This is RPRs - the rooftop restaurant at Royal Pines Resort at the Gold Coast.

It is a rare find to get a restaurant like this these days.  It is extremely popular and books out weeks in advance.  It’s also a favourite location for anniversaries, as I discovered.  The day I photographed the restaurant, they were expecting a 50th anniversary couple - you’ll see the table arrangements the restaurant organised soon.

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Christmas is a time of family, friends, eating, celebration, eating, relaxation, eating, Christmas lights, eating, Christmas Carols, and in some circles… golf.  This time of year is well renowned for upping the ‘kitsch’ factor, and apparently golf courses are not immune.

Recently visiting the Royal Pines Golf Resort at the Gold Coast, I caught site of something that you just don’t see everyday - a tinsel adored golf buggy.

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OK, I’m a ‘little’ excited.  I just got the Canon 5D, and I LOVE IT!

I picked up my new toy over the weekend and set about photographing a weekend down the beautiful Gold Coast.  I stayed at the Royal Pines Resort and it was wonderful.  I experimented with the settings see how they worked and every time the camera made my photos look better!  Here is the hotel room:

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Animals are amazing.  Regardless of whether or not they’re cute, I find the animal kingdom an amazing thing.  At a Christmas party recently, a wildlife display was organised (for the kids).  Being a big kid myself, I enjoyed this more than the sit down 3 course lunch

All the animals that were brought were native to Australia, and all a little ‘rough’ around the edges.  These animals are made to complement their environment, and blend in to camouflage themselves.

They say never to photograph children and babies.  Well, tame animals are a little easier than in the wild.  Still, getting a decent photograph was a little challenging.

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Christmas is a fun time of year.  Lots of decorations, parties, presents and Christmas Carols.  I was recently in Sydney’s Rocks area and they were decorating with a difference - using recycled soft drink bottles…

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Panning can be a challenge at the best of times, but trying to follow a miniature car zipping around a mini racetrack with a camera lens was a new experience for me.

I’d never been to a model car race track until recently and I was amazed at what a big enterprise it is!  This is an activity that attracts young and not-so-young, men, women, kids, teenagers, you name it!

Here are my attempts to capture some of the smaller speed demons on the track…

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There’s nothing I love more than spending time with my dog, Mirabell.  She is such a happy, loving, bundle of energy.  Even when she does something annoying she’s cute!

Because she’s so energetic, getting a photo of her that’s in focus can sometimes be a challenge.  When she’s lying down it’s OK, but on the go, she puts all her energies into what she’s doing.

Here is a somewhat unique photo where she’s actually looking at the camera and her eyes are in focus!

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One of the beautiful things about spring are the colours of the flowers, not to mention the smells!  I love flowers, and the colours of Australian flora is even more stunning after rain.

Recently, I went for a day trip up into the mountains, about a week after we had received some much needed rain.  Now the colours of these particular plants are my favourites…

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This week I’m trying out some more Photoshop filter effects.  This image is from the same location as last week - different subject though.  I liked the chicken as it really stood out against the dark surroundings of the sculptures.  This is the original:

I was going for an other-worldly effect, and first duplicated the background (Layer > Duplicate Layer > Background Copy). Next I converted the image to black and white (Image > Adjustments > Channel Mixer > Monochrome).

Then I used the history brush to colour the chicken and bring its colour back into the image, while keeping the rest of the image black and white.  Here is where to find the history brush:

Next I used the Magnetic Lasso tool to select the chicken and inverted the selection (Select > Inverse) so I could change the appearance of the background.

I adding an effect called Ocean Ripple then to the background: View > Distort > Ocean Ripple.

This is the result:

The effect is a little different.  Not too other-worldly, but getting there.

The different filters are fun to play with and see what kind of ‘distortion’ is possible.

Following on from last week’s post, I took a drive up to the beautiful Sunshine Coast Hinterland over the weekend and scoured out some photography subjects.  I ended up looking at things I normally wouldn’t and came up with a few interesting images.

I’ve also had some fun editing them in Photoshop.  I’ll take you through a few of them today, and continue on next week with a few others.

Here is the original image:

Now for the Photoshopped image.  To achieve this you follow these steps: Image > Adjustments > Channel Mixer > Monochrome; then, Filter > Texture > Grain.  Intensity = 30, and Contrast = 50.

Chinese warrior sculptures always look so solemn and intimidating.  I wanted to amplify this, and black and white with a grain applied seemed the right way to achieve it.

Now, the next one isn’t quite as dramatic.  Looking at the images side by side you can see that there is a difference, but you might not really have noticed the photoshopped image if you hadn’t seen the original…

It is subtle, but you can see that the craquelure effect in Photoshop makes the image a little grainer.  The Grain effect made too much of a difference, and I wanted it to be subtle.

To achieve this, you go to the Filter menu, then select Texture, then Craquelure.

Have a play with the filter effects in Photoshop - it’s amazing what you can do.